Karl Marx

Karl Marx was born in 1818 and died in
1883. Marx was a German Jew. His father was a lawyer. When Marx was six years of
age, his family became Christian but religion never appealed spiritually to Marx
who later referred to it as “the opium of the people”.

Marx was interested in Hegelian
philosophy. He studied it at university but ended up rejecting most of it as he
believed that Hegel had mixed up most issues relevant to C19th society.

In 1842, Marx joined the staff of the
newspaper the “Rheinische Zeitung” and became its editor. The views
expressed in it quickly came to the attention of the authorities and it was
suppressed. Marx went to Paris. In 1845, he was expelled from Paris and went to
Brussels. Here, he joined the Communist League, and stimulated its growth. In
1848, Marx, supported by Engels, completed the “Communist Manifesto”. This
was a mixture of others people’s beliefs consolidated into one. Marx never
denied that he was less than original in his thinking - his skill was
interweaving other people’s ideas into one. This in itself was a major
achievement as many of those who influenced him, were frequently at intellectual
odds with others who also influenced Marx. He took what appealed to him and
ended with a relatively small book that was to revolutionise society.

The “Communist Manifesto” stated
that all men were born free but that society had got to such a state that the
majority were in chains. Engels referred to the book as being the “very way of
life”.

In 1848, Western Europe was swept by a
wave of revolutions. Marx wanted to use this chaos to his advantage and used a
newspaper, the ‘Neue Rheinische Zeitung’ to launch his ten points:

1)
The abolition of the property/ownership of land.

2)
Income tax to be graded to income – the more an individual earned, the
more they paid. The less you earned, the less you paid.

3)
Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

4)
The confiscation of all property of immigrants and rebels.

5)
The centralisation of all credit into the hands of the state by means of
a national bank with state capital and an exclusive economy.

6)
Centralisation of all means of communication and transport into the hands
of the state.

7)
The extension of factories and the instrument of production owned by the
state. Bringing into cultivation all land not being used that could be and an
improvement in the fertility of the soil.

8)
The equal obligation of all to work and the establishment of an
industrial and agricultural armies.

9)
The combination of agriculture and manufacturing industries with the
gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country by the more
equable distribution of the population over the country.

10)
Free education for all
children in public schools. The abolition of child labour in factories; an
educated child would be better for society in the long term, than a child not
educated.

The reaction to Marxism:

Marxism made people think about the
society they lived in. Ironically, Marxism produced many ideological offshoots
– those who agreed with eight of his ideas but criticised two, for example, or
supported five but not the other five. As a result of this, Marxism as an entity
came under strain.

The main criticism of Marx was that he
undervalued non-economic forces and that he wrapped a great deal of his beliefs
in an economic shell at the expense of non-economic issues. Those who criticised
Marx said that he failed to take into account patterns of culture and a
country’s traditions.

Another criticism of Marx was that what
he wrote was very vague and open to interpretation, especially what would happen
after a proletariat revolution.

Those who supported Marx said that his
beliefs gave the working class hope of a better life. They said that the workers
would be inspired by an intellectual who was on their side and who was fighting
their cause. In 1898, the Russian Social Democratic Party was formed to expand
Marx’s beliefs in Russia.

Marxism was a difficult belief to apply
in Russia as the nation was primarily an agricultural nation and Marx had based
his beliefs on an industrial society such as Germany or Britain. The
conservatism, lack of any education and superstition that existed in the rural
areas of Russia meant that Marx was less than enthusiastically welcomed – even
with his promise of land reform. Marx had based a great deal of his support on
the industrial workers – and it needed people in Russia to organise these
people. Some tried to organise trade unions that were easily infiltrated by the
police. It needed Lenin to make the industrial workers a more dynamic group
capable of pushing through a revolution.